self ralph nader former us presidential candidate and author of many bestselling books including most recently the seventeen solutions bold ideas for our american future ralph thank you so much for coming on i think you're a fan so at this point we're merely just a few days away from the presidential election you've always known the two party system is a sham now that obama has been such a failure in his presidency bringing forward any progressive progressivism whatsoever do you think people are starting to wake up to the two party dictatorship not really i think from wonder very small children are taught in schools through scholastic magazine when they have these mock trials for boodle school students there are only two parties so they have the republican and democrat and then they have sort of a blank so they grow up in a winner take all system with an electoral college where you can come in second in a popular vote and become president and they see no other alternative so they say well i want to be with the winner so i'll just vote for one of the two parties and

i'm like who vote for the one of the two parties of my grandparents voted for called hereditary voters vote republican you vote democrat so we have a huge job in this country to up end the two party dictatorship and that's what it really is it does not like competition it does not like alternative parties and therefore it just continues the dials for the same commercial dollars and so their agendas are getting closer and closer and closer between republican and democrat that's what the new third parties are trying but they've got a big hill to climb they definitely do and it is an illusion of choice really and that's the sad part is that people think that they have this choice and as you said the two parties ideologies are essentially marry each other more than they ever have been i mean something that i've always found interesting nixon is regarded as this conservative he was really implemented more and more progressive ideals than our policies than obama has and obama's lionize does as this progressive i mean he's he's really done nothing progressive. do we have

a problem this country with giving a wind allegiance to a party that we don't even see reality anymore well both parties are really one corporate party with two heads wearing different make they dial for the same dollars small street they cater to the same commercial interests to repress the minimum wage in this country there are thirty million workers in this country that are making less in inflation adjusted wages the new workers made one hundred sixty eight when the economy was half and worker productivity was half what it is today obama won't stand up for thirty million workers romney won't stand up for thirty million workers what are they there for that's just one example majority of the people want full medicare for all everybody in nobody out free choice of doctor and hospital both parties are against it the majority of the people conservatives and liberals want cracking down on corporate crime wall street to houston and the abuses that are in the mainstream press they won't even raise the issue of law and order for corporate crime so these are just some of the examples whereby the

american people who are supposed to be sovereign in the constitution we the people is the preamble are basically shut out excluded disrespected dismissed underpaid under-insured and flattered into acquiescence because they're told forget it there's only two parties you choose or you stay home instead of having a binding none of the above the way leningrad in st petersburg actually had after the demise of the soviet union that a binding none of the above so you can go to the polls and vote no to all the candidates and if it wins sets a new new election a new candidate they won't even support something like that which i think about eighty five ninety percent of the people in america would support and we see tens of millions of people that aren't even participate in any election probably because of that you know they don't subscribe to this mandate that gives the president to continue his policies i. i wanted to play

a sound bite from michael moore that i thought was really interesting it's very illustrative what i'm saying yeah let's play the sound by really quickly. michael and i are going to get down on our knees and beg you. thought. if you were going to. go out. you know it's so interesting because for years prior to that i remember michael moore your rally saying the lesser of two evils is still if i mean what happened and he's saying you're a great american don't run what happened well politically michael moore switched and he became a democrat big d. and that was so it was true that clip because here you have two well known progressive liberals in america bill maher and michael moore basically saying to me

don't express your first amendment rights ok if they say they oppose me one thing but to say drop out don't express your freedom of speech freedom to petition your government freedom to assembly that's how dk our democratic process is i should have told him on the program don't get on your knees here tell the democratic party not to get on his knees to wall street. it is just so amazing to see to establish i mean well that's that's what it is they're stablish men lackeys is really what i like to call them but i mean what is the danger of buying into this lesser of two evils mentality and every year things get worse in america i mean living standards are declining. if the rich are richer the poor are poor the middle class is shrinking you've got fifty million people who are being told pay or die if you're sick because they don't have health insurance forty five thousand americans die every year according to a harvard medical school study because they can't afford health insurance eat

hundred a week. now in western europe and canada nobody dies because they don't have health insurance they have health and turns from birth to the end and that's an example of the silent violence that goes on you have two hundred thousand americans who are dying every year according to authorities of sources like the centers for disease control and harvard school of public health why because in hospitals there are medical negligence medical errors and hospital induced infections obama and romney won't even mention it it's off the table all the important things in my book seventeen solutions which most people would support in this country to refresh and redirect our country are off the table of the democrat republican party agendas don't even want to discuss it. in this country we applaud it when politicians say we're not going to give you health insurance just seems like we're all who is to blame for the sick decay of voting against our best interests completely not even

acknowledging what reality is it us is it the media i mean what do you think the source of the road is the core person premises this is a government of the general motors by the duponts for the axons and they control the government that's what the conservatives call crony capitalism and liberals call corporate welfare so they control every department agency they put their own high officials in government positions that's a matter of record they have thousands of political action committees funneling money into both parties in congress and the no white house and they've turned the government against its own people so we have to in effect reassert the sovereignty of the people by community economies and electoral reforms and basically saying to people you want to hand in a thing worthwhile to your children or grandchildren even just a decent standard of living you're going to have to spend more time every week on your citizen duties and on your political responsibilities and it only takes one

percent of the people who are really active spread throughout all can. rational districts having the majority of the people behind them quietly to turn the country around if you turn congress around five hundred thirty five people who put their shoes on every day like unite you can turn the government around and you can make corporations accountable make them our servants were serious supposed to be when they were charged for two centuries ago instead of our masters. well put on your hears things can be consumer advocacy obviously you if you were responsible for mandating cars to put airbags and ralph i mean what is the danger of having corporations regulate themselves well because they will regulate themselves in a way where they can get away with anything basically we need law and order for corporate crime fraud and abuse but the penalties are much more severe for street crime than they are for crimes in the suites you know the executives we answer to

even tells us that even though far more people. die are sick or injured and have their savings looted. by corporate outlawry then crime in the streets that is the latter is it can't compare with the casualty toll from occupational diseases from toxics from product defects from hospital infections all these others are preventable but we have to hold accountable corporations a stake here and let's talk about your book seventeen solutions you talk about the way the world is the way the world can be what for you is the definitive characterised characteristic of a better world ralph and how can we get there because basically about one to two percent of the people making civic engagement and political participation for the rest of the people their chief. and said if we had as much intensity by one

fourth of the people focusing on congress as they are they. toward birdwatching would be great that we have fifteen million serious bird watchers in this country you know when the killers cameras up at dawn into the marshes when rain sleet we had just a fourth of those five hundred thirty five members of congress advancing changes that are supported by public opinion we could turn it around so when the occupy wall street say we are the ninety nine percent and the rich are in power for the one percent i say but the other one percent back home doing what i'm just suggesting and what's outlined in this book seventeen solutions can turn the country. and just to wrap it up you know i i think a lot of the dangerous writing about the lesser of two evils mentality it's not even so much as that you know your vote is thrown away but they actually people still believe in you for costing gore the election in two thousand it's so

dangerous to peddle that rhetoric instead of actually calling it what it was which was a rigged election and gore won he conceded i mean what is the danger of of using the lesser of two evils rhetoric to really blame you for that election because they'll never be an end to the lesser of two evils so every four years both parties get worse but you see as long as the two parties fostered this ideology that if you're a third party you're a second class citizen you siphon votes away right if we all know an equal right to run for election none of us are spoilers or all of us are spoilers trying to get votes from each other but gore if you ask gore he doesn't blame the green party for two thousand he blames the theft of the election in florida he blames himself for not getting his home state of tennessee and he blames the electoral college because he won the popular vote by five hundred thousand no where else in any society that says it's democracy you can come in first in the popular vote and lose the office if you're running for only in america lunacy well everyone check out the. untamed

solutions by ralph nader here's a friend thank you so much for coming on talking to me really appreciate it supposed to be. something like are you seeing so far go to our youtube channel at youtube dot com plus breaking the fat and subscribe check out our facebook page at facebook dot com slash break in the set and check out a website a fan made as a break in the set dot com or follow me on twitter at abby martin and i take a break from my preaching stay tuned to hear about the u.s. double standards when it comes to the middle east next. wealthy british style and some of us went on to basements and sometimes we're. going to. market why not counting them find out what's really happening to the global economy

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soon. because. earlier this week bahrain issued some very alarming legislation that you may have missed the video election frenzy about government just banned all protests and rallies squashing dissent according to the country's interior minister thirty's

were prompted to do this in order to maintain security in the island nation. and quell the violations committed by protesters bahrain is no stranger to violations itself in fact it's a well documented violator of human rights but somehow this information is not quite making headline news in the mainstream when u.s. foreign policy flags human rights abuses in countries like syria or egypt and makes one wonder why we condemn one country yet ignore another so what could these u.s. double standards mean for already tense us middle east relationship to help me break this all down and more i'm joined by r.t. arabic correspondent reba. dia thank you so much for coming on thank you for having me so what do you think about this recent banning of protests in bahrain and why are we hearing about this well i would say that this is not the only sorry that's not making its way to the mainstream headlines in this country a lot of stories are not making their way to the headlines and a lot of it has to do with policymakers maybe thinking that this is not important

enough for the american people to know this is not important enough or to make it to the american public and this just shows you all how the whole bite is the media is here and how they view it that one practice is more important than another practice one killing and one country is more important or less important than another killing in a different country it just shows you the buy is and the ignorance a lot of people would say that the media when it comes to handling issues in the middle east yeah absolutely i mean and that's why i respect our t. so much for covering you know a lot of other things that the corporate media of course. it does not because the total government let's talk about the government rhetoric how insulting it is to have the u.s. government basically spread spreading democracy abroad but then their allegiance to saudi arabia. bahrain what do you think these double standards do when people are looking at the u.s. government intervening in these countries what do you think this does to u.s.

middle east relations a lot of it started even before the u.s. siding with israel blindly without even looking at the palestinian question and a lot of people in the arab world would look at this double standard and say why do we have to trust what the u.s. is doing in these countries now when we still in the past that they never stood on the side of the. palestinians and other issues as well egypt is another example because when the practiced i did in egypt the u.s. was very hesitant to label the protesters and labeled the president in that country so. a lot of it i think the arabs look at this and say we are just skeptical of anything that the u.s. is doing right now their intervention or no intervention in any country is a source of skepticism is a source of critique and that's very understandable when you know when the people

have not seen it because a consistent position of the u.s. you know it's what's going on in the arab world lived through it i mean the egyptians we basically went to the last moment when we couldn't support mubarak anymore to jump in and be like we support the revolution but let's talk about syria . do you think that we're giving syria so much attention is it to kind of build up the militarization around iran more is it a proxy playground for us to kind of delve into our interest in the region what is going on there and what you think is going to happen a lot of people would give you different answers i don't think anyone has the recipe as of what's going on what the u.s. really has in mind a lot of that i would say a lot of. people in the. i would tell you that it all has to do with israel the u.s. does not want to intervene in syria because they don't know what's going to happen next we've seen what happens in libya we've seen what kind of governments that the revolution produce they are and they are afraid that this is the kind of government that the revolution in syria is going to be used and and that's not something that israel would want in its neighborhood a lot of that also has to do with the fact that just what happened in iraq that

weakening that country is probably what a lot of forces now want to see happen in syria a weak country a failure country rather where you have ongoing civil war there is no winner everybody knows that this civil war is not going to produce a winner and we're just taking that country on the path of lebannon just another decade of war between two different factions where basically we know that there are countries and forces that are supporting both. forces on the ground and that's just a de facto that is convenient for everybody and the reason as we heard from mitt romney during the debates he said you know i want to install pretty much a puppet regime there a pro-u.s. operation and that's really you know this isn't an opportunity in syria absolutely crisis it's opportunity in the words of you know the ball ministration thank you so much for coming on breaking it down.

i . guys as we near the elections there's one state that i keep hearing about that has historically laid groundbreaking legal initiatives my home state of california and this year is no different california began the initiative process in one thousand eleven becoming the tenth state to host this form of direct democracy which allows california residents to vote on referendums on specific issues in the california constitution as the. forty six amendments as a result of this process this year a total of thirteen propositions have made it to california's ballot but i want to talk to you about three of them first is proposition thirty six a modification of the three strikes law if approved it would change the current law to impose a life sentence only if a felon commits

a violent crime or if on their third strike it's related to sex drugs or firearms now if this proposition passes it's estimated that up to three thousand convicted felons whose third strike convictions were for nonviolent crimes competition the court for new reduced sentences this is particularly significant to the hundreds of people serving life sentences in california prisons for shoplifting small amounts of merchandise campaign funds in favor of this measure far surpass those opposed to it but there's certainly been plenty of efforts to see this measure not pass here's one example. basically what you just saw is not true think of it this way california holds the country's largest economy it is the ninth largest in the world so while the stay

continues to struggle with finding ways to cut its deficit allowing prop thirty six to pass would reduce the sentences of these prisoners saving the state up to two hundred million dollars a year it always boils down to the money doesn't it most certainly does in the next case so would you rather have biotech companies incur a one time cost to repackage their goods or would you rather pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills for illnesses related the consumption of genetically modified foods. proposition thirty seven would require mandatory labeling of g.e. foods the initiative itself would appear on the ballot as the california right to know genetically engineered food act i cannot stress how important this initiative is because the f.d.a. doesn't require independent testing of g.m.o. foods in the u.s. people are unaware of what the consequences are of consuming these foods and in fact voting yes on prop thirty seven seems like a no brainer but the efforts of those who profit from keeping us in the dark are

pouring tens of millions of dollars into a distant from asian campaign to stop prop thirty seven reports from last week show that over forty one million dollars has been invested into the no on prop thirty seven campaign check it out. thirty seven proposes a food labeling requirement the american medical association called scientifically unjustified and ministering thirty seven's complex regulations would waste millions of tax dollars of all throwing on a lab coat and a stethoscope does not mean this lady is a doctor or that she gives a crap about your health and to say that a label even would be scientifically unjustified is calling the forty other countries that require labels or a straight up ban g m o's stupid look the cost for california residents is in consequential if you actually look at the text of the ballot measure but i guess a forty one million dollar disinfo campaign can convince people of just about anything so the question you should really be asking yourself is why have these

biotech corporations spent so much more money keeping people in the dark than it would just cost them to label the foods. speaking of being behind the rest of the industrialized world the next proposition i want to talk to about is prop thirty four it would end the barbaric practice of capital punishment and california it's titled the death penalty initiative statute the measure passes prop thirty four were to limit the death penalty altogether and replace it with life in prison without the possibility of parole. it's encouraging to see the amount of support this measure has californians have donated up to seven million dollars to pass it working the three hundred sixty thousand dollars raised by those against it are there ads out there trying to sway people's minds.

trying to appeal to emotion much i mean we get it murders deserve to be behind bars what that doesn't tell you is that over one hundred thirty people on death row been exonerated their d.n.a. evidence proving their innocence but besides the fact that innocent people have been placed on death row california taxpayers pay nineteen thousand dollars more annually per death row prisoner and those regularly incarcerated and the pills process takes decades more over the murder of an alleged killer might be a gratifying moment of closure for the victim's family but it will never fill the void left from losing a loved one stead of only fuel a vicious cycle of vengeance and hate it's time to evolve folks who live in california please join me in the breaking the set team and supporting these groundbreaking efforts in direct democracy happy voting.

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